Here are my toronto lisp users group notes. The topics are expressed in rough order of appearance. Sorry no hyperlinks right now.
* LISP Meeting <2008-12-02 Tue>
Overall the meeting was about communication, semantics, lexicons and models. Oh with a real lack of syntax (use sexprs) unless we need it. Gary probably led most of the discussion.
How does this relate to LISP? Sexprs and expressability.
*** Concurrency -> Expressability of Lisp - The language problem - ORC - stratego - programming rewriting - TXL etc - issue of performance - Adoption - low level lisp - sassy - assembler and scheme macros - call out to scheme - siag - scheme in a grid - proto scheme - natural language ??? - legalese - semantics - grammar - lexical - more semantics - more semantics - back to concurrency support - call return - grammar - did I mention semantics *** Convienance - Prolog to lisp and vice versa - erlang - concurrency convienance *** GUIs - Book: Humane interface - jeff raskin - ... missed some *** Visualization -> Diagrams - studies - communication - diagrams have limitations - discussion - making diagrams - executability *** Tree structured program - Book: Design Driven Design - macros are semantics independant - why bother making the syntax - work on semantics - SE & Tree Structure - Tree Specs - Executable specs - formal specs? - formal language for specs? - use sexprs - human translation to - formal?? - paraphrased: - gary says model driven design/arch/spec - fails due to a lack of lisp? - Elegance versus symbolics - nice drawings mean - problem is defined - once you can winnow SE down to diagrams - you're a real engineer - Book: Realistic Compiler Generator from MIT Press.
*** Meeting Ended
*** people in attendance - abram - brian - paul - justin - james - chris - gary
On Tuesday 02 December 2008 9:57:50 pm Abram Hindle wrote:
- Book: Realistic Compiler Generator from MIT Press.
Here is the actual reference that I couldn't remember:
Realistic Compiler Generation, Peter Lee
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=6203
Denotational semantics -> POTs (prefix-form operator terms) -> executable Scheme output.
[Great meeting notes, btw. Thanks, Abram.]
pt
*** GUIs - Book: Humane interface - jeff raskin
This book (mentioned tonight) - The Humane Interface - is brilliant:
http://www.amazon.com/Humane-Interface-Directions-Designing-Interactive/dp/0...
And, as I looked this reference up, Amazon.com reminded me of this other brilliant book that was not mentioned tonight:
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/dp/0465067107/ref...
An easy, enthralling read.
This book is not about programming, but about design. It examines issues, like, why everyone has had the experience of trying to push a door open when it clearly says "PULL" and how such a simple mistake can result in mortally dangerous situations.
I have not been the same since I read both of these books.
The way I see it, people who gravitate towards Lisp care more about the deeper issues of design and quality. Lisp'ers are the "architects" and "engineers" of the software world, leaving the Java / perl / etc.'ers to act as the tradesmen. These non-Lisp books might be of interest to people in our group.
These books are, also, available at the library.
pt
On Tue, Dec 02, 2008 at 09:57:50PM -0500, Abram Hindle wrote:
Here are my toronto lisp users group notes. The topics are expressed in rough order of appearance. Sorry no hyperlinks right now. [.. snip ..]
Thanks, I think I can better follow the conversation now in retrospect.
-
Abram Hindle -
gfb＠cs.toronto.edu -
J Kenneth King -
Paul Tarvydas